BMI Gives Jazz Pros a Hand

By

Marc Myers

Sept. 11, 2013 5:36 pm ET

New York

Bassist
Rufus Reid
began his career in the early 1970s recording with jazz giants like
Dexter Gordon,
Gene Ammons and
Eddie Harris.
When small-group jazz opportunities dried up in Chicago in the late '70s, he took a teaching job at a New Jersey university. But by 1999 Mr. Reid decided to leave the security of academia to try his hand at jazz orchestral composing—a move some might have viewed as impractical.

"There certainly are fewer working big bands to write for now, and smaller audiences, but I needed the creative jolt—my wife insisted," said Mr. Reid, 69, who prior to 1999 had composed but had not arranged works for big band or orchestra. "I applied to the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop and was accepted. A year later I won the first annual BMI Foundation/Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize for my 'Skies Over Emilia.' Commissions followed, and now I feel like a kid again."

Founded 25 years ago, the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop is one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious orchestral lab programs for advanced jazz artists. Funded by Broadcast Music Inc.—the royalty-collection and music-rights management company—the workshop accepts about a dozen applicants each year and started its new season this week.

Like the Actors Studio, the Tanglewood Music Center and other rigorous programs that help artists develop and refine their skills, BMI's workshop guides musicians through the big-band composing and arranging process. The concept—in which working musicians help each other hammer out results—dates back to the late 1940s and early '50s, when arranger
Gil Evans
met with composer-musicians at his apartment and bassist
Charles Mingus
led experimental groups.

The 10 new musicians who were just accepted into BMI's free, three-year program will gather for two hours every other Tuesday through May in a conference room on the 30th floor of New York's 7 World Trade Center, where BMI is headquartered. There, they will share their evolving band scores and listen to advice and critiques from other composers and the program's director and assistant director.

Then, once a month, participants will hear their works played by a 17-piece big band at the local musicians' union rehearsal space. At the end of the season, the workshop will present a concert of the best works. Three judges will choose a winner, who will receive a $3,000 commission for another original work that will be performed a year later, in June 2015.

"This isn't a vocational school where you learn to use wrenches and then go out and find a job fixing things," said pianist-composer
Jim McNeely,
the workshop's musical director, responding to a question about how jazz orchestral composing and arranging fit into today's marketplace. "This is art and another approach to education that expands the musician's ear, technique and vision."

The workshop was the brainchild of
Manny Albam
and
Bob Brookmeyer
—two highly regarded orchestral composer-arrangers. When they approached BMI in the late 1980s about sponsoring a program, the organization was already funding a theater workshop.

"When Bob and Manny first came to see me at BMI with a plan developed with journalist
Burt Korall,
they said jazz composers needed mentoring from other working composers to go beyond the academic training offered by music schools," said
Robbin Ahrold,
a former BMI executive. "Within weeks their workshop idea was approved and Bob and Manny became its first co-directors." (Albam died in 2001, and Brookmeyer in 2011.)

Today, although the popularity of big bands has declined considerably, BMI remains committed to the program. "When BMI was founded nearly 75 years ago, jazz musicians helped us get started," said
Del Bryant,
BMI's CEO. "Jazz is a true American art form and remains important to our organization's core. We know that jazz composers need to stretch artistically, and we want to protect the music and the process of creating it."

But managing a jazz orchestra can be economically challenging. Darcy James Argue, whose "Transit" won the workshop's competition in 2004, launched Secret Society, a big band, to perform his new works. While he calls his workshop experience "refreshing," noting it provided him with "invaluable perspective," he also warned that putting theory into practice can be daunting.

"Starting a big band is an excellent way to have all of your available time and money sucked into a deep, black hole," said Mr. Argue, 38, who continues to tour with his big band. "But I've been fortunate to work as a guest artist with bands world-wide, which allows me to collaborate with great players and finance my big-band habit back home."

As for Mr. Reid, in February he will release "Quiet Pride"—his first jazz orchestral album, featuring 22 handpicked New York musicians. "Great composer-arrangers like
Benny Golson,
Jimmy Heath and Slide Hampton have said to me: 'Wow, you're really serious. Keep it up.' Can you imagine—those guys said that. I can't even express in words how that made me feel."

Mr. Myers writes daily about music at JazzWax.com and is the author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press).

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